Just another happy rag by one of them broads.

Stacked Clouds.

This morning I weigh 93.8 kilos, just one ounce more than yesterday. I won’t worry about that, but I will be careful about what I eat today. This is what I had yesterday: one small glass of juice, one piece of Maasdammer cheese, one pastry, some Melba toast, a big helping of pasta, some more Melba toast and one tall glass of cold milk. I think I overdid it just a wee bit, just about an ounce too much.

There is not much to report about yesterday. Eduard and I had our usual lazy Sunday morning. After I walked the dog and took my medicines, I went back to bed with a cup of coffee and woke Eduard out of his deep slumber. He had been awake once before and had already put on his special cologne, so he smelled very nice already. I do love the smell of Hugo Boss on a man. I push my face into his beard and have a good sniff! Sunday morning has become such a ritual, that the cats have all resigned themselves to sharing the bed with us. They either stay put or go find some other place to take their morning nap. Jesker just sighs very deeply and goes to sleep on his pillow beside the bed. It is nice that we don’t have any children running around the place and that we can take our time. Spending quality time together is a big thing at our age!

When we do finally get up, it is almost noontime and we still have to eat breakfast. Eduard always boils eggs on Sunday mornings and sometimes I have one too, but mostly I don’t, because I eat so many eggs during the week. I don’t know if I still have to watch my cholesterol, but just to be on the safe side…

At noontime I walked the dog and stopped by my sister’s. She had a friend over with her three kids and I had not seen this friend for some time and, of course, she was impressed with the way I looked. I guess it really does make a difference with how I used to look some time ago. I am getting used to how I look now, all dressed up and decorated, but I am sure there is quite a difference. All of my sister’s friends are skinny and well dressed, as is my sister. I always felt like a blimp around them and I sure don’t feel that way anymore now. I did have an enormous inferiority complex about my body that I tried not to let bother me, but it can’t be helped. When you’re fat, that’s just the way it is.

After my sister’s friend left, we sat outside on the patio for some time with an espresso and my niece was there too, counting herself among the grown ups now and participating in the conversation. So we discussed vacations and countries to go to amongst other things. They are going to Italy in July, first to Tuscany and then to the Garda lake where they will be sailing and canoeing.

My sister and the kids took sailing lessons on their vacation last year, so they are going to put this into practice now. I have only been sailing once in a tiny little sailboat and I managed to capsize in it and that was quite hilarious, so I suppose I better take some lessons first too. I was picked up by a passing boat and the tiny little sailboat was pulled upright without any problems, but that is as far as my experience has gone. I would like to go sailing in a bigger boat one day and really go fast in the wind.

When I got home, Eduard was watching the Formula 1 race and, because there was nothing else to do, I started watching it too. It can’t be helped, it is sort of hypnotizing watching the cars circle around the track. Luckily I was saved from this after a while by a phone call from Lucien, who had to move up the date that we are meeting downtown by two days. She said that she had been a bit hypo manic the past week and I said, Great, did you have a good time? But she said that she didn’t really and that is mostly had just worried her, which is really a shame, because when you are hypo manic it is supposed to be fun in the first place. I know that I enjoyed it very much the last time I was and I see no point in being it unless you have some good times. It really can’t be helped, can it? So I wonder if she was truly hypo manic or if she was maybe just very anxious for a while. I guess not being her psychiatrist, I’ll never know. I know that when I am hypo manic the overall feeling is one of happiness and I don’t feel very worried about that.

Anyway, we made a date to meet on Friday when there is the open air market and Lucien wants to buy a new pair of jeans and a new purse and I suppose I will look some more for a jacket. Maybe I’ll find one at the market, they do sell all sorts of things there. Sometimes you can find some great stuff there, although you have to be careful because they do cater to a certain kind of public. Some of the things can be a bit tacky. But a jeans jacket is the same no matter where you buy it, so I hope I find one.

For dinner I made a vegetarian pasta sauce from scratch. I was trying to sort of duplicate the sauce that my sister had fixed, but I didn’t have the recipe. I do know that Eduard likes lots of garlic and onions, so I started with those and then added tomatoes and zucchini and basil and oregano and let that simmer for a while. It turned out very well and Eduard enjoyed it. He likes pasta or rice with any sort of sauce. I think those are his favorite kinds of food to eat. I’ll fix any kind of food, as long as it doesn’t have meat in it and without meat, you quickly end up making some sort of sauce with all sorts of vegetables in it.

I really hope that I turn out not to be allergic to fish, because we could eat that more often. Not just the salmon on Friday’s, but all sorts of fish during the week. It is so easy to fix, after all. I like cod and mackerel, for instance. Or trout. Although mackerel has a lot of bones in it. On the market they mostly sell sea fish and some fish is hard to come by nowadays because of overfishing. There are the talapia filet’s that are very popular now, but I don’t care much for those. They taste kind of fishy and sandy. Or maybe I had a bad batch of them. When I was a kid, we ate a lot of plaice, that was a fish that was good for deep frying.

Anyway, in the evening, Eduard had to go to work. Which left me with the TV under my complete control, which was a dubious pleasure, because at first there was not that much interesting on. There was a program on about Dutch rappers and I really tried watching it with an open mind, but I suppose I am of the wrong generation and of the wrong language, because I just don’t like it. I appreciate the deeper message, but find it hard to understand it under all the obscenities which rap generally is filled with. I suppose within a certain kind of group of people this is acceptable language and the message is understood, but I think for the larger public it defeats the purpose. I guess I won’t be listening to any Dutch rap, regardless of what it tries to tell me.

Then the first episode of the news series ‘Lewis’ came on and that was more my kind of thing. I thought it was very well done and I thought the Lewis character had substance and presence. He can carry the show and his sergeant was the right choice also. Just a little bit more scholarly than Lewis and good for all sorts of more obscure information that turned out to be helpful. I think the Lewis character is very sympathetic and you just have very positive feelings watching him in action. You want him to do well without Morse and you want him to shine without Morse. And he does. Leave it to the BBC to produce a good show, they never fail.

That left me going to bed at ten o’clock and ready I was too. I barely drank my glass of milk before I was asleep. That Temazepam is wonderful stuff, but I think even without it, I would have been ready to go to sleep immediately. Going to sleep at ten o’clock is late for me, after all.

A number of times a day, I recite, in my head, the Our father, or the Lord’s Prayer as it is also known. I do it to keep remembering the words, so I don’t forget them, but I suppose I am like a person with a rosary who keeps repeating the same prayer at every bead. I find some amount of satisfaction every time I recite it without making a mistake. I don’t know exactly why this is so and why I don’t learn to say it in Dutch, except that for God it probably doesn’t matter in which language I recite it. It is a bit like saying a magic formula. If you keep getting it right, something good will happen. Or nothing bad will happen. See, my magical thinking again. I have to stop that.

I am reciting the version of the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer. That is the one I learned a long time ago and that is the one that stuck in my head. I don’t remember why and how I learned it. It may be something I just picked up from watching TV. I do find some amount of comfort in it, because it is a formula and because I do have to recite it and not sit there and make up my own way and wishes to address God. I feel like I am not specifically demanding anything and that I am not having to struggle with the image of God. When I recite that prayer, I just concentrate on the words and what they mean and getting them right. There are no other thoughts in my head at that time. I think it is a very helpful thing to start this relationship with my Higher Being off with from the beginning again. I suppose it would be the same with reciting any bit of sacred religious text. That you would find some amount of satisfaction in getting the words right and stating the precision of the formula. There must be a reason, after all, why specific bits of text like this exist to comfort and ease the way to God.

I am glad that I am going to the chapel again, but I am also glad that I am not sitting there desperately asking for good things to come my way. I felt it was too humbling an attitude on my part and I don’t think it was the right way to go about it. I don’t think God wants me to be all humbled and unequal if I am created in his image. And no, I don’t think He created the world and the universe in seven days. I do believe in the theory of evolution. Somehow I do think that all can fit together somehow. It’s just a mystery that I haven’t figured out and never will. And yes, under other circumstances I could be a Buddhist or an animist or whatever. Whatever circumstances I was born under. Like I said before, I borrow from the religion that is the closest at hand and that I know the best and incorporate it into the one that I try to create for myself. It is just starting to look like a more traditional religion now. That’s because I am going back to the basics and I am borrowing the basics. Hopefully I will be able to elaborate on it later on. Let me stick to the beginning for a while first. No hasty moves!

Today I am seeing my GP about the results of the allergy tests and to ask him about allergy drops for my eyes and allergy pills to take every day. I think whatever inflammation I had in my eyes is gone, but they still burn a bit, especially when it is a windy dry day like it was yesterday. You should have seen the clouds in the blue sky. They looked like they came straight of a 17th century landscape painting, they were so beautiful. They were stacked up in the sky like mountains, all round and rolling and white and huge. And it was warm too, I hung the laundry outside to dry and it took only a few hours.

Well, now I have run out of words again. I have just poured myself another cup of coffee and I think I will read the news for a bit. Jesker is still asleep and there are no cats yet. They will all show up now for having written that.

Have a great day you all, ciao…

P.S. The pastry came from my sister and was called a BosscheBol. It is a chocolate covered pastry that is filled with fresh whipped cream. She gave it to me to take home to Eduard, but he didn’t want it, so I ate it instead. It was very messy to eat and my cheeks and fingers were covered with chocolate. It was very good, but it was so airy that it was gone in a few bites. I do so love chocolate. I could eat a whole box of it. Oh no, I can’t, that’s right, I forgot!